.: On the one side of the courtroom are attorneys repping the creditors trying to force the sale of a sports team owned by Tom Hicks; on the other side are Hicks's attorneys. So perhaps it's not an exact replay of the summer's marathon duel in a Fort Worth courtroom involving the sale of Your Texas Rangers, but close enough: Liverpool FC's board wants to sell to New England Sports Ventures for £300m, while Hicks attempts to block the sale by ousting the board and replacing it with his son Mack and another Crescent Court-based Hicks Holdings higher-up.

Hicks insists there are better offers out there -- and perhaps that's true, given this morning's news that a man named Peter Lim is prepared to Singapore sling an additional £20 Liverpool's way. Meanwhile, the Royal Bank of Scotland just wants its money back; hence the first of two court proceedings this week under way today. That's where our headline comes from: Said RBS attorney Richard Snowden, Hicks's attempt to shove the board overboard reeked of "breathtaking arrogance."

Paul Girolami, Hicks's rep, says the anvil-headed Texas billionaire doesn't want to keep the team at all; rather, he insists, Hicks's problem "is that the board did not properly enter into the NESV agreement in that the directors did not properly consider alternative offers and so it is they who are in breach of the terms of the sale agreement with RBS." He also said some other stuff. Hicks and George Gillett owe RBS £200m. It's due Friday.